Emily Ibrahim joined the faculty of Kenyon College in 2023 and teaches in the Department of Anthropology. Her research focuses on how creative forms of communication shape the experiences of people living in diverse Islamic migrant settlements called “zongos” in Ghana, West Africa. Ibrahim is also co-founder of the nonprofit organization called the Zongo Story Project in which she works with students in Ghana to write, illustrate and tell stories that are meaningful to them. In 2016, their book “Gizo-Gizo: A Tale from the Zongo Lagoon” won the African Studies Association’s Africana Book Award for the best children’s book.

Prior to Kenyon, Ibrahim taught anthropology at Brandeis University and landscape architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). 

Areas of Expertise

Linguistics and semiotics, storytelling, material worlds

Education

2022 — Doctor of Philosophy from Boston University

2014 — Master of Science from Massachusetts Institute of Tec

2009 — Master of Arts from University of Virginia

Courses Recently Taught

This course introduces students to the discipline that studies and compares cultures. Students learn about the main concepts used in anthropology and how anthropologists conduct research, while also discovering how people live in other times and places. They also learn about theories that provide frameworks for understanding and comparing cultures. Ethnographic descriptions of life in particular places give students factual materials with which to apply and critique such theories. Through this introduction to the study of culture in general, and an exposure to specific cultures, students inevitably come to re-examine some of the premises of their own culture. This foundation course is required for upper-level work in cultural anthropology courses. No prerequisite. Offered every semester.

What role does language play in shaping and reflecting cultural norms and social interactions? This course delves deeply into the wide-ranging ways our lives are mediated by, and brought to life through, human communication. We begin by comparing and contrasting human language with animal signaling systems in monkeys and apes. In our exploration of language, we examine how the verbal medium communicates not only semantic content but also information about social personae and power. Next, we turn to the semiotics of non-verbal forms of communication, including self-adornment, clothing and other visual images. We draw on our semiotic toolkit to analyze how advertisements communicate about products, consumers and society alike, examining some historical shifts in advertising semiotics. We devote the remaining classes to a theoretical and empirical exploration of mass and social media, exploring how digital contexts and memeified content can distort faraway truths, enlist people in outrageous political movements, and furnish entirely new opportunities for the performance of identity and negotiation of relationships. A major goal is for students to refine their ability to interpret and critique signs and signaling in their own social and media worlds. This course counts toward an upper-level cultural requirement for the major. Prerequisite: ANTH 113.